Bristle-Needle Fox
by BarracudaHeart
Summary: As sickeningly pleasing as it could be sometimes, this affliction was taking a toll on him, and all he really wanted now was to feel wholly human again. And he'd be willing to do almost anything for it.
Working past his problems was no longer an option for Lars, especially because there were no possible solutions for him anymore. His perpetual loneliness was internalized, and there was no amount of friendship or intimacy that would save him from it. The pain his emotions and self hate would cause him to scrunch his eyes shut and resist the urge to curl in on himself and burn up like a paper in flame.

Instead, he withdrew himself in on everything, to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing, a futile effort ultimately, but he would not stop trying.

His bottling and repression might have been slightly effective, but in his slumber, everything was fair game. His inner demons and his flaws would manifest themselves in his dreams, where he could experience them alone, and deal with their after effects when he woke up.

He didn't exactly know when it happened, but he soon noticed his dreams started getting more thematic.

His stomach would be twisting into impossible knots, but instead of spitting up black polluted fog, like normal, he would retch once and his teeth would be razor sharp fangs that could cut his lips. His body would shiver with chills and he'd feel needle sharp pricks all over his body and feel enveloped in musk. His eyes would grow sharp and he could see his dreamscape as if it were a clear picture sharpened with bright color, and a sudden alertness.

The first few dreams, he didn't think much of it. But then after weeks of repetition, he sometimes just didn't know what was real anymore.

Things got even stranger when, during a walk in the woods to take a shortcut to school, Lars came across a grove that was near identical to the location in his dreams, and somehow, he felt the urge to act on it, to be animalistic, as if it were no different than a sexual urge, and be feral.

He'd black out during these moments, it seemed. Because one minute, he'd be approaching a thick tree trunk, and the next, he'd be staring in confusion and amazement at his hands, how scratched and bleeding they'd become, how much blood and dirt were under his ruined fingernails, and more impressively, how deep and jagged of claw marks had been made into the rough tree bark.

How amazing it felt, seconds before the self-realized horror could set in.

* * *

Lars resolved that he would need to find another hobby to distract himself. Somehow, cooking just made him feel a little more enabled than before, like he'd have the urge to dig the knife he used for vegetables into something that was still breathing, and capable of bellowing in pain before he could take a bite of their raw warm flesh. He was both tantalized and sickened at the thought.

He read somewhere that art was a good outlet for stress; that's what he surmised all of this idiocy was; just stress. He was prompted to gather up as much paper and drawing utensils as he could, finding old charcoal in the attic, and colored paints and inks. When that didn't seem distracting enough, he decided he could get closer to the root of his delusions, with armature wire, and sculpting material. He cut off the bristles of old scrub brushes, and dyed them in orange ink that nearly looked blood red, stabbing them into the clay molds he'd created on the wire, waiting hours, sitting and staring at them until they had dried so he could put additional touches onto it, dark brown and black paints.

They still didn't look right, and they still really didn't look much like anything beyond prickly humanoid figures.

Lars' mother had commented that they were cute, and he almost threw them away immediately. Instead, he thanked her.

* * *

He wasn't sure what started the argument, it was probably something really anal, like not counting out the cash drawer properly or something, but Lars knew he had made a mistake in making a snarky and dismissive comment to Sadie, because that just got the ball rolling.

There was about three minutes of the two exchanging insults, criticisms, and stupid names, and if they both sounded more like irritable kindergartners, Lars might have laughed in the middle of it, because it was just this stupid. But he couldn't find the strength to laugh anymore, when it was easier to mask his frustrations with rage and bitterness instead.

Before it got any more heated than it could be, Sadie had stormed out to cool off, muttering that Lars would have made Freud an excellent patient. Lars went to the break room, leaving the counter unattended, and all he could see for several minutes was red. Not just seeing it, but feeling it. It almost felt congested, he swallowed with difficulty, and his ears would pop. He'd feel thirsty, hungry, ill, quenched, tired, and adrenaline-pulsed all at once.

He could feel so much, but when the sensation cocktail was over and he unexplicably felt better, things were suddenly all wrong. There was a fistful of shredded napkins in his fists, plaster under his nails, a soreness in both his feet, and he wasn't sitting in the plastic break room chair anymore, rather, he was sat on the floor.

Lars didn't know how much time had passed, and had rushed out to the unattended counter without even looking at whatever had changed in the break room.

He'd spent five minutes at the counter scrolling apathetically on his phone when he heard Sadie enter from the back, whatever apology that came out of her throat suddenly dying.

"L-Lars?", she had called out, almost fearfully.

"Yeah?", he piped up.

"D-did you do this?", she asked.

"Do what?", he raised an eyebrow, and got up, stepping back into the break room, to see exactly what had become of the break room during his mental black out.

The table where they had their reading material of choice stacked was toppled, torn remains of magazines and books sprinkling the ground. Packages of napkins were torn open like animals from the bellies, shredded entrails of napkins left all over, and a few stacks of boxes had been toppled, chunks of cardboard ripped off and strewn about the room. Coffee cups had fallen to the floor and shattered. Claw marks were left in the plaster wall and corkboards, shallow trenches in the shapes of smiles, grinning on the two confused employees.

 _Holy shit, did I do that?_

"L-Lars?"

Lars swallowed hard, "I-I uh...I was just at the counter the whole time with my headphones and stuff..."

Sadie looked at the scratches in the walls, examining them, and mumbled, "Gosh that's deep...do you think someone or _something_ broke in?"

"I-I don't know...m-maybe," he nodded, stomach hurting from the panic he was feeling. Part of himself knew he had to do with this, what with all his weird dreams and fantasies and paranoia, it was almost obvious he'd gone on a blind rageout, but another part of him didn't want to believe it. He wasn't like this! He wasn't _supposed_ to be like this!

Sadie looked at Lars again with worry, then the destruction, then him again, and mumbled with sympathetic, kindly eyes, "I'm sorry. It's been a rough week for both of us, right?"

"Y-Yeah," Lars swallowed, mumbling, "I-I'm sorry too."

"...Are you alright? You look really shaken up..."

"I-I'm fine, I just-", he began, and his hands twitched, as if to flex claws, and he suddenly felt ill.

"Maybe you should go home, you don't look so great," Sadie spoke up softly, touching his cheek, feeling how warm it was.

For a split second in his fever, Lars almost imagined lunging at her gentle hand and severing it with springtrap jaws.

* * *

"-Anyway, Sadie wanted me to check on you, you didn't show up to work for the last two days," Ronaldo concluded his explanation for having appeared unannounced at Lars' house.

"Of course I haven't," Lars muttered, glaring at him with annoyance, "I'm sick. Would you be going to work with a fever and delusions?"

"You've been having delusions?"

Lars smiled tightly, "Yeah, I might just write a blog post about it," he spoke with a little too much meanness, and Ronaldo's angry expression confirmed it, and he groaned, sighing, "Wait, look, sorry, I just feel like crap alright? I just meant like...spacing out and stuff."

Ronaldo rolled his eyes, and sighed, "Have you seen the doctor for your fever? You usually don't get sick."

"I'm sure I'm fine," he mumbled, getting off his couch, "Probably just a bug," he lied.

For the last two days, he'd holed himself up in his home, not wanting to risk another incident like the break room, but it didn't feel like much of a relief. He just had the potential of being a danger to his home instead.

Ronaldo was about to leave when he saw Lars' works in progress, armature wire puppets, sitting on the end table in a metal sheet to dry, and smiled, "You made these?"

"Yeah," Lars mumbled, "Just a dumb hobby."

"These are good," Ronaldo grinned, looking over them, "The fur texture is really innovative, using brush bristles...that's some impressive handiwork."

"Thanks," Lars murmured, looking over the still non descript puppets. They were slowly becoming more animal with his addition of haunches to the legs, and long bristled tails.

"You could really get a good living out of making these things," Ronaldo had commented, and Lars flushed a bit, feeling a little touched by the compliment.

"...Thanks."

He grew irritated once again when Ronaldo bid him farewell and wished him luck on finishing his 'squirrel puppets'.

* * *

His house soon wasn't going to be safe with him in it anymore, Lars surmised, it was in more danger than his workplace. His mother and father deserved to be out of danger, they were good, kind, hardworking people who were unfortunate to be cursed with him being their offspring.

His dreams were starting to become more in alignment with his concerns, giving what he could consider practical places to inhabit for sake of safety. One night, he dreamed of a forest grove again, and instead of going primal, he made himself a comfortable place to rest, and laid down, and it had been the most peaceful dream he'd had in months.

But then several nights later, the dream repeated, and instead of going to sleep, he felt the horrible and wonderful sensation that he was becoming something less than human, and more animal, and he was suddenly digging his claws through the earth, and creating what could only be described as a burrow, and the dream ended as soon as he entered the dark tunnel.

As disturbing as it was, it did give him ideas for living arrangements.

Doing some studying on his computer, Lars found examples in history of settlers building and living in dugout homes while in the midst of traveling across the country. Researching building methods and materials, it seemed like it would be a practical place, at least practical enough so he could live somewhere for cheap without making a terrible mistake.

With all his previous walks in the woods, he was sure he could find the proper spot to break ground.

As he carried a shovel out to the forest that next afternoon to start his digging plans, he resisted the sudden urge to dig it out with his own hands.

* * *

"Sadie's worried about you, you haven't shown up to work in weeks!", Steven pleaded as he followed after Lars from the woods, where he'd found him wordlessly hollowing out a large cave in the earth, big enough to crawl in and even stand up.

"I'll be back eventually!", Lars growled irritably, "Go home already!"

After both Ronaldo and Sadie expressed worry at not seeing or hearing from the teen in days, Steven, the empathetic boy he was, grew just as worried, and set out to find Lars, and after finding him in this questionable situation, needed answers.

"...why are you making that?", Steven looked back at the dugout, pointing to it.

Lars glared, "It's not your business, and it never will be, so don't even think of asking me anything else."

"Even Ronaldo is worried about you!"

"Who cares what he thinks?", Lars scoffed angrily, his stomps toward his parents' house becoming more aggressive.

"I do!"

"Well I don't!", he snarled.

"What's the matter with you?!", Steven asked, sounding less worried and more angry.

Whirling around, without a single thought, Lars' hand sliced through the air, stretched out like a vengeful talon as he screeched with rage, "NOTHING!"

A yelp cut through the air in shock, and Lars immediately jumped back, realizing his hand had made contact with something other than the air.

Steven clutched his cheek where Lars had swiped him, staring at the teen in shock, and looking ready to break into tears. When he lifted his hand, three bright red marks where Lars broke the skin smiled directly at the horrified culprit.

"Ohmygod, Steven," Lars immediately began to hyperventilate, regretting what had just happened, "Ohgod, I'm so-"

"I-It's fine-" Steven choked, trying not to cry, "J-just...please tell me what's wrong."

"I don't know, I don't know, oh god I'm sorry I don't know," Lars whimpered, rubbing furiously at his eyes and forehead as he tried to think of what to do to remedy this, "I didn't mean to scratch you, I didn't- fuck," he hissed, and held back a terrified sob, "Shit, man, let me see that, oh god, I really scratched you, I'm so sorry-"

"Lars, it's ok!", Steven whimpered, and hugged the other around his middle, "I know it was an accident! But something is really hurting you, and I want to help you!"

"God-", Lars hissed, gently trying to pry the other off, "Please...please please please don't do this for me right now, Steven, I don't even know what's wrong with me, and I don't want you to try and figure it out, I just wanna figure this out myself, OK?"

"B-But I-"

"Please," Lars whispered, shaking terribly, still staring at the fresh scratch he inflicted on the poor boy, horrified at how much it looked like a wild claw mark.

Steven paused, still looking upset, but sighed with submission, "OK..."

"Th-thank you," Lars murmured, "I really am sorry, lemme like...get that thing washed for you OK? I can grab some stuff from inside my house so it-"

"S-Sure fine," Steven mumbled, cutting Lars off, not really looking to provoke him again.

Once Lars had the wound bandaged, and a promise of a free donut on the house when he was finally back to work, Steven went home in silence, and Lars immediately threw himself in the shower, gripping tightly to himself as the scalding hot water ran over him. He aggressively scratched at himself, leaving dark deep marks all over his upper arms, chest, and thighs, not stopping until some of them began to bleed, and he hissed, hot tears running down his face, holding back the urge to scream.

He'd really gone too far this time, hurting Steven like that. Even if the kid forgave him, Lars couldn't bear to connect with him again until he could find the cure to what he now was going to consider, with everything he'd endured, a disease.

Steven was a good kid. He didn't deserve to be hurt, it disgusted Lars to think of it.

But why did he want to do it again, this time to someone else?

* * *

It was a sickening thing, to be mentally getting off to the thought of deliberately harming someone, without a name or face, but with proof that they were alive.

But somehow, when he disconnected the facts that it had been innocent and goodhearted Steven, Lars had almost _liked_ the idea of attacking a person like that.

It wasn't like he _wanted_ to like it, but it was almost like a need, as he thought over it for the next two weeks, having stayed to himself, and not going anywhere besides his parents' house and his dugout which still lacked basic furnishings.

He put his art supplies to use, scribbling out illegible images of figures symbolizing himself, and the victims, drawing them in helplessly torn pieces, then shredding the paper to bits and shoving it in his wastebasket. He dug his charcoal into the wall, and thought nothing of it as he made claw marks with it. If his parents complained, he'd say it was for a project, and nothing more would come of it.

Still, drawing the act didn't make the desire go away, it only heightened it, to the point that Lars knew that if he wanted to escape out of these dreams, these fantasies, these primal animalistic goals, he'd have to go through with the act, or kill himself, and he just didn't have the heart or complete loss of common sense to do either. He couldn't even make compromise with it by killing something smaller, like an animal, he knew that wouldn't work, he'd gone hunting and fishing several times before, and that was hardly satisfactory for his need. It would have to be people.

That evening upon this realization, he lived through his animal dream again, and it ended with him struggling and failing to gnaw his leg off as it was painfully snared in a hunter's trap.

* * *

Out of the blue, Ronaldo had begged Lars, around five in the morning, for a couch to crash on, and Lars responded to each of his texts with a somber decline. When Ronaldo tried verbally asking Lars, pleading in his voice, Lars immediately hung up and shut off his phone, but not before hearing his former friend garble " _She's back._ " If Lars had fewer problems to deal with, he might have cared enough to ask who.

As luck would have it, Lars' father had forcefully asked his son to run an errand to the store, and Lars didn't have the heart to argue, deciding he could restrain himself during such a simple task. On his walk however, he stopped in front of the fry shop when he heard multiple voices.

Mr. Fryman sputtering, "You can't just-"

"I can, and I will, I've got the money for it," crooned a cold matronly voice.

"I'm nearly 18, you can't-", Ronaldo piped up

"Shut up, boy," the voice snarled.

Curiosity piqued, Lars peeked into the service window of the shop, and just within sight stood the Fryman family, father and sons ranked together against the cold stare of a woman who was only the slightest bit familiar.

"M-Ma, seriously!", Ronaldo almost pleaded, his voice catching, "You can't just take us away from dad like this!"

"What did I tell you? You keep your mouth shut until I say you can talk, alright?"

"N-no! I'm not a little kid anymore, I can make my own decisions, and there's no way you're-"

A sharp noise caught Lars' ears and made them itch, and he saw the woman's clenched hand in post swing as Ronaldo had doubled over, leaning forwards, clutching at his face and holding back what could only be a sob of terror and frustration. His brother and father had immediately turned their attention to him in an attempt to aid or comfort him, and he pulled his hand away from his face finally, looking mortified at his mother's smug and cold expression.

"Well would you look at that, you caught my ring on your face, what a shame. Now I'm going to have to get it cleaned up. Thanks," she glowered at the elder boy. Whatever confidence Ronaldo had was absent as he avoided her gaze with fear, while Peedee hugged his arm tightly, and his father rubbed his shoulder.

The woman gave a cold glare to her ex-husband, "I'm giving you two days to get the boys moved out of here, or I'm getting the courts involved, got it, Pete?"

Mr. Fryman's lips pursed together tightly as he glared at her in a failed attempt to intimidate her, not taking his hand off his son's shoulder.

Ronaldo flinched and Peedee had winced when their mother spoke with a cool voice and terrifyingly calm expression to match her cruel smirk, "You two boys be good for mommy, understood?"

Lars didn't stick around to hear any further of it, and even if he had, he'd blacked out mentally once Ronaldo had been struck in the face. He didn't even realize he'd carried himself home until he'd made it to his room, and stared at all of his shredded drawings, that had fallen out of his tipped-over wastebasket, and were slowly growing dark from some unidentified substance on the floor.

When Lars peered closer, he recognized it as something all too familiar, and looked down at his leg, seeing he'd broken a scratch open by slamming it against something during his blind race home, dark blood having oozed down and onto the floor while he had stood there in a daze.

He shook his head in an attempt to shake away his thoughts, and clear his mind, and then gazed at his bloody papers again, slowly pushing them back into the wastebasket, then laid on his bed, closing his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was sitting on the floor, and something thick and bristly was in his hand.

Over the brush bristles what had been previously modeled into pointed snouts and ears, he'd layered black and white paint in an attempt to create eyes and teeth, but they came out jagged, uneven, sloppy, demented, and crude...noses and whiskers dyed black, and small sharp points cut from sewing needles were placed at the end of each appendage.

Dazed, and apathetic, Lars thumbed the dried blood on his previously opened cut, reaching for the wet blood still layered underneath, and then smeared it onto the white teeth of the puppets.

The foxes were complete.

* * *

Mrs. Fryman disappeared that next evening.

* * *

When her lawyer expressed concern that she was not taking their calls, clues of the woman's last known whereabouts led authorities to end up deciding to go searching in the woods. The Fryman family followed, but in the hope that she would not be found, and go through with her plans of tearing them apart.

Ronaldo, not enthused in the slightest to look for the person who caused him great amounts of pain as a child, and more recently a cut across his nose, split off from the group in order to wander the woods by himself, going off the usual paths, and wondering if there was a shortcut to make it back home.

He stopped in place when he heard the sound of rustling leaves, and decided it would be best to walk faster, and not think about doing any filming or photography as he sometimes did. The way out of here couldn't be that far off...

His stomach sank when he reached the same log he'd passed twice, and realized he was more than a little lost. The sinking turned to painful twisting and frozen blood when he heard steps behind him that were so calculated and cautious, he was thoroughly unsettled.

Once he turned his head to see what was following him, he ran a cold sweat.

Lars' face was far too calm, far too naive for what else he carried with him, bloodied hands, dirt under his fingernails, and even worse, blood around his mouth and on his teeth. He staggered forward a bit more, looking uneasy on his feet, "...Ronaldo? What are you doing out here?"

"L-Lars," Ronaldo whispered, not a statement or a question, but a breath of shock.

"I heard about your mom. I'd say I'm sorry she's missing, but I know how rough things are between you and her...", he spoke, his voice gaining more breath to it as he caught his second wind.

"..."

"Oh? This?", Lars looked at the blood on his own hands, and gave a good-natured smile, "It's really nothing. Just a little bit of messy business, you know?"

Ronaldo looked closer at Lars' hands, "...Th-that's my mother's ring."

Lars looked at the trinket on his hand, and flashed it with a small smile, "Yeah, it looks kinda swanky on me, don't it?"

Everything was starting to piece together for Ronaldo, and this time he was pretty sure he wasn't jumping to conclusions. That blood wasn't Lars' own.

"...You...my mom...y-you-"

"Ronaldo, everything's gonna be fine after this, OK? I'm feeling better than ever," Lars smiled, his red teeth glistening, "I'm going to be heading back to work with Sadie tomorrow, and you'll be able to stay here with your brother and dad. Isn't that great?"

"L-Lars, you-"

"Why don't you follow me to the river, and help me clean all this messy stuff off? We can head to my house, and I can show you those little puppets I finished. I even drew them out, so I can make movies with them or something. I've always kind of thought foxes were pretty cool."

Ronaldo took a step back.

Lars replaced the step with his own, his smile even more peaceful, genuinely human, "Ronnie. Things are gonna be fine. They're gonna be great now. I _promise_. Now follow me to the river."

* * *

 _Police discovered the body of Julienne Fryman in the woods of Beach City earlier this month after she had disappeared while visiting family. Her body was found near a cluster of what possibly were abandoned fox dens, and a collapsed dugout._

 _Fryman had been visiting family in the midst of a custody battle, and had disappeared a day before a scheduled appointment with a legal adviser, her body found hours later. No charges were filed against her ex-husband, Peter Fryman._

 _Autopsy results show Fryman had been forcibly dragged a great distance, and severely mauled, causing her death._

 _Traces of DNA found on the victim caused one local resident, 18 year old Lars Tang, to be questioned by police. Tang claims he had accidentally bumped into Fryman while approaching her to return her lost ring earlier in the day, hours before she had disappeared._

 _Suspicions against both her ex-husband and Tang were dropped once the autopsy results were released._

 _"No man could have mauled her that way, not with those marks, and with those wounds" the chief investigator of the case reported, "It had to be an animal."_


End file.
